Saturday, December 5, 2015

There is a permanent need for a Left-of-centre party that is fit to govern, and a permanent danger from one that isn’t.

And now Labour goes and wins the Oldham by-election, pretty creditably. It would have been surprising, perhaps, if the party had not been able to retain such a safe seat, but Mr Corbyn sees this as a vindication. The population of Oldham is roughly a quarter Muslim, and Muslim votes, sometimes for base reasons, are more likely to go one way en masse than white ones.

(RACIST OR WHAT ? )

If Mr Corbyn’s power within his party increases, he will have enough influence to lame our institutional response to Islamism and so empower the modern enemy within

“Out there” is a potential coalition of Muslims, some ethnic minorities, white middle-class public-sector activists, some trade unions and those sometimes referred to as “the most vulnerable in our society”, who may look to his type of Labour Party as their natural home. Such a crazy salad could win the London mayoralty for Labour’s Saddiq Khan next year. Add a rough-and-ready deal to include Scottish Nationalists in a parliamentary alliance, and general election victory must seem possible to Mr Corbyn.